Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 410: To ask the Minister for Agriculture and Food if all payments due to farmers under the various aid or headage payment schemes are up to date; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24992/06]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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One of my main objectives since assuming office as Minister for Agriculture and Food was to ensure the efficient implementation of the decoupled Single Payment Scheme — the most significant change to agricultural support since our accession to the European Community.

This huge task was successfully implemented when over €1 billion in Single Payments issued to 118,500 farmers last December, meeting the target we had set ourselves of making the payments on the first possible date. This was a major undertaking and the outcome, after painstaking preparatory work in establishing individual entitlements, was, by any standards, a major achievement. To date, payments worth in excess of €1.173 billion have issued to over 98% of Scheme applicants.

The changeover to the Single Payment was undertaken while work continued on winding up the coupled schemes. A small number of outstanding cases remain under these schemes, which the staff assigned to this work are continuing to clear on an ongoing basis. By their nature, these residual cases are complex and difficult to resolve. However, every effort is being made to bring each one to resolution. My intention is to have these outstanding cases largely finalised before the end of this year.